


How You Portray Her

by tigereyes45



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, Patron Claude, Post-Game AU, let the boy paint!, painter Ignatz, set a quite a few years into the future after the game ends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-07 22:31:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20477462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigereyes45/pseuds/tigereyes45
Summary: Ignatz has one more painting he wants to finish. One more painting of her that he must finish.





	How You Portray Her

Ignatz hums quietly to himself as he dabs his paintbrush. The light brown thistles are slowly coated in a strange mix of orange and white. It makes a pale imitation of the two colors they had been separately. Perfect for his pale imitation of the scene his mind had conjured during the night.

He carefully covers the top of the canvas in the color. Ignatz sets the brush down on the counter next to him. He picks up a smaller one with a purple handle beside it. It was the brushed he uses for faces. Specifically for her face. If the young man was honest with himself, he hardly paints anyone else. In some ways, she had become the new goddess to him. Perhaps ever since the night of their vow.

_ “Always live honestly with yourself.” _

After that, how could he do anything but paint? Well even after the vow he had tried to do other things. Ignatz had become a knight under Claude’s command. He enjoyed the service, but it didn’t give him the same kind of joy. When Claude approached him for a commission one night, that was the beginning. The commission had also been a painting of her. Of their old professor.

Claude wanted her dressed in her war uniform, something Ignatz had trouble calling from memory. He had written to all their old classmates and even the church itself. In the hopes that someone could send him a uniform close enough to it. When he got her exact old uniform it was a surprise, and she never wears anything else in his paintings.

He had decorated her in all the things they had come to see as representative of her presence. Warm meals, flowers growing tall, a fishing pole with the wire wrapping around her, the sword of the creator in one hand, and the iron blade her father had given her in the other. It was crowded, and the work of an amateur. Yet Claude hung it up in his halls all the same.

His painting today will not be so crowded. Her face would be almost perfect. Her hands would be full again. One arm holds her father close to her chest. The other with a blade held up at an invisible enemy. He had their outlines done. The basic colors placed already, but the image was so vivid in his head.

Her dark green-blue hair, a color he used to have so much trouble creating, would be surrounded by the pale orange of the sky. As if a fire had been slowly extinguishing behind her. Ignatz carefully places her eyes. He keeps them wide and aimed. Not nearly as oblivious as she had always been in class or wandering the monastery on it after. No the way she cried, how hollow she had been up until the dance. He adds in the tear streaks. They were light blurry specks coming down her face. They come down in a mess unlike the blood on her blade. It drips down towards her arm so neatly. The red a deep, ruby color.

As awful as it was to say, she was most human in that moment than she ever was in any other. As she held a dying Jeralt in her arms, her tears flowed freely. It was the one moment that stuck out most to him. As the years had gone by his memories of other places, and events have faded away. He couldn’t remember how the monastery looked before the attack anymore. He could barely recall the reaction on his parents’ faces when he told them about the job Claude offered.

How Raphael’s smile was, or the way his little sister used to look. The two had died so many years ago now. So many of the old Golden Dear were now dead. Their faces painted on canvas back when he remembered them better. Some with them having been there in person to pose.

“Working on another masterpiece?”

Ignatz would have jumped at the voice if he could have without harming himself. From slamming his knees into the shelf or his canvas to falling completely off his stool. Thankfully he manages to just go a little rigid from surprise.

“Yes. My truest masterpiece. As long as I don’t mess it up.”

“You won’t. Your hand is never steadier than when you’re painting her.” Claude leans over Ignatz’s shoulder. His eyes grow wide. “I-I had forgotten how he looked.”

“Jeralt?”

“Well yeah. I remember Jeralt, but I forgot how he looked when he died. It happened so long ago.”

“Forty years in about two months.”

Claude’s natural laugh was raspy this time. Age had taken the edge from it. “I wish I had your mind Ignatz. Though you never were one to forget anything about Teach.”

“It was the first time we saw her cry.”

“You answer that so simply, but there was a lot more to that moment besides just that.” Claude pauses and leans in even closer to the work. “Whose blood is on her blade?”

He bites his cheek. How was he supposed to answer that? Ignatz opens his mouth to answer, before biting his cheek again. When the taste of iron hits his tongue he releases his flesh from his teeth. Ignatz wonders what color his blood would make on the page. Would it look the same shade as the color he is using? Would it look like what he remembers the blood on battlefields looking like?

“Her enemies’.”

“She had a lot of those.” Claude lets out a long whistle before finally stepping back.

“They were all ours as well.”

Ignatz doesn’t understand why Claude grabbed his shoulders. He doesn’t understand why the leader of the alliance swung him around his stool. Nor does the look on Claude’s face make any sense. His eyes were searching, they always were, but his tone…. It was so soft, so careful as if Ignatz was a statue himself, and Claude was scared to break him.

“Hey there, you alright? Maybe you should take a break.”

“I’m fine Claude. I want to finish this.”

“Alright, Ignatz. It’s just that you sounded off just then. Are you feeling alright?” Before Ignatz could pull away Claude was holding a hand up to his forehead.

“I’m fine Claude. Really. I’m just, just tired.” He pushes himself free. “I want to get this done. It’s my one wish left.”

“Left? Did you meet the goddess and didn’t tell me?” Claude asks with a shy smile.

“No, but I’m going to.”

“Gee maybe you should rest. You make it sound like you’re going to die soon.”

“I might Claude. You never know when our time here is over. I just want to make sure I leave nothing unfinished. So please I would like to return to my work.”

Finally, Claude sighs but nods anyway. “Fine, fine Ignatz. I can tell you aren’t really in a mood to talk about this right now, but I have one last thing to say.”

“Yes?”

“Byleth. You always portray her before the changes. You always portray the teach we met our first day of school. Never how she was towards the end, or even right before she slept for so long. Maybe you should think about that Ignatz. Maybe ask yourself why it’s always the her from before.”

Ignatz listens quietly to Claude’s every step. The fainter they grow slowly the more comfortable he becomes again. He starts to hum her song once more. Carefully he picks up a clean brush that’s a little bigger than the last one. He is cautious to gently dab the colors. As cautious as he had been at choosing them. They all had to be perfect.

As perfect as the goddess was for her.


End file.
